The present invention relates to combination tools and more particularly to combination tools utilized by firemen and other rescue personnel in emergency rescue applications.
Typically, a fireman or other rescue worker is confronted with extremely diverse emergency situations wherein it is often necessary, for example, to break down a door or wall, clear ground brush, shear sheet metal structures, sever electrical power lines, or dig small excavations. As such, the typical rescue worker is required to arrive at an emergency scene possessing a plurality of tools, each capable of performing a specific function.
In those few instances where vehicle access to the immediate emergency scene is readily available, the storage, transport, and handling problems associated with these numerous tools pose, at a minimum, a substantial inconvenience to the rescue worker. However, in most instances where access is limited, these problems become acute, requiring the rescue worker to manually carry a variety of heavy, cumbersome tools into a remote emergency rescue area.
Further, in such instances, it is often difficult to fully appraise the needed rescue tools prior to on-the-scene inspection, thereby necessitating the rescue worker to leave the emergency scene to retrieve the proper tool.
As will be recognized, such storage, transport, and retrieval problems pose a serious handicap to the rescue worker, and result in the loss of valuable time which may well be the difference between life and death. Thus, there exists a need in the rescue field for a special tool particularly adapted to meet the diverse situations typically confronted by rescue workers.
The prior art has attempted to provide partial solutions for this problem. Thus, combination tools specifically designed for rescue applications are described in Spencer-Foote, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,837,023, Wardwell, 3,604,023, Reid, 3,710,407, Albert, 855,741, and Carrer, 3,882,560. Although such devices have proven somewhat useful in their limited applications, they have possessed serious deficiencies which have curtailed their widespread use and adoption in the rescue field.
In particular, most prior art devices have suffered from their inability to completely meet the diversity required in rescue applications, often necessitating the rescue workers to additionally carry one or more other specialized tools into the rescue area. Further, in an attempt to meet the diversity, many prior art tools, such as that disclosed in Vosbikian et al, U.S. Pat. No. 2,377,730, have stored one or more sharp blade attachments directly upon the handle of the device. Although such designs increased the versatility of the device, they additionally posed a severe safety hazard to the rescue worker.
Further, in other prior art devices (such as Morris, U.S. Pat. Nos. 784,959 and Shoudel, 3,824,641), a series of tool attachments have been utilized to increase the versatility of the combination tool. However, these attachments have typically been threaded onto the device, thereby requiring a substantial period of time in set-up, as well as requiring the use of either a screwdriver or wrench to mount the head attachments directly upon the tool. Additionally, most of these prior art combination tools have comprised either light, fragile devices which were incapable of withstanding the high structural stresses encountered in rescue applications, or extremely heavy apparatus, which proved cumbersome in use. Thus, the prior art devices do not meet the multi-faceted demands of the rescue field.